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Tuesday, October 6, 2015

31 Days of Halloween 2015: In The Dark

[31 Days of Halloween 2015: IN THE DARK premieres October 15th at the Tall Grass film festival in Wichita, Kansas.]

Review by Bob Ignizio

*Note: As with last year’s 31 Days of Halloween marathon of
horror movie reviews, we’ll be diving deep into the new release section looking
for modern horror fare, hoping for the best, but frankly expecting the worst.*

There’s nothing about IN
THE DARK that makes it a better or more original film than any number of
other EXORCIST rip-offs. It is,
however, professionally made and delivers the goods its audience expects, so if
you really want to see this material get rehashed once again, you could do
worse.

In the Linda Blair role is Grace Folsom as Bethany Mills, a
college age artist who recently survived an accident and is currently living at
home with her mom Joan (Catherine Cobb Ryan). Bethany has just started a new
series of paintings with a distinctly creepy vibe when strange things start
happening in the house – lights flicker, radios go off and on, and mysterious
and dangerous apparitions start to appear.

Meanwhile college student Veronica Carpenter (Lynn
Justinger) is working on her thesis about the paranormal. She’s a skeptic, and is
more than a little rude about letting her latest interview subject,
parapsychologist Lois Kearne (Fiona Horrigan), know it.

Kearne freely admits that most of the cases she investigated
were either hoaxes or perfectly explainable phenomena, but there were a handful
that she considers proof of the supernatural. One in particular involved the
exorcism of a young boy, and it is because of that case that Joan Mills comes
to Kearne looking for help. Kearne agrees, bring Veronica along, too, and
before you know it the demonic shenanigans are in full effect.

While I wouldn’t say anyone in the cast is outright bad,
most of them have their performances dialed up to 11. Justinger in particular
comes across as way too over the top, constantly exuding attitude and snark
that, regardless of her personal beliefs, wouldn’t make much sense if she were
really a student interviewing someone of Kearne’s status who had graciously
given of her time.

Despite the fact that Kearne would seem to be a more secular
exorcist than the priests usually cast in such roles, IN THE DARK still has very much a distinct “faith based” aura to
it. There’s lots of heavy-handed metaphysical talk even when the characters
aren’t doing battle with demons.

Writer/director David Spaltro’s previous film THINGS I DON’T UNDERSTAND dealt with
weighty metaphysical issues as well, but IN
THE DARK is a much more focused and coherent film. The small cast and limited
locations give away the film’s low budget, but the production values are solid
and Spaltro’s style is visually interesting enough to give the film more of a
sheen than one might expect.

The biggest problem with the film is the “been there, done
that” feel that no amount of style can cover up. We’ve seen this same story
done countless times before, both better and worse. IN THE DARK is neither good enough to function as a serious
examination of faith it wants to be, nor does it deliver on the pea soup
spitting, head-twisting, and blasphemous tirades that would make it
entertaining schlock. 2 out of 4 stars.